BARRY HINES

Author biography:

Barry Hines was born in 1939 in the mining village of Hoyland Common, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He attended Ecclesfield Grammar School, where he played football and was selected for the England Grammar Schools’ team. On leaving school, he worked first as an apprentice mining surveyor for the National Coal Board before entering Loughborough Training College to study Physical Education. He worked as a physical education teacher for several years, first in London and later in South Yorkshire, where he wrote novels in the school library after the children had gone home. He would go on to become a full-time writer, publishing nine novels and writing screenplays for film and television.

Hines is best known for his second novel, A Kestrel for a Knave, an immediate bestseller when published in Great Britain in 1968. The book has never been out of print in the United Kingdom, and it was adapted as a screenplay by Hines for a 1969 Ken Loach film, Kes, which is regarded as one of the great classics of British cinema.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977 and has also been made an Honorary Fellow of Sheffield Hallam University.

TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." - Times Literary Supplement